Columbo: The Helter Skelter Murders
William Harrington
A Tom Docherty Associates Book
Contents
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part II
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part III
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Part IV
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
PRAISE FOR COLUMBO: THE GRASSY KNOLL
* * *
“Harrington gets every note right and readers will find the action, including the assassination scenes, as vivid as anything on the tube—and without commercials. READERS WILL CLAMOR FOR SEQUELS.”
—Publishers Weekly
* * *
“A wonderful tale full of spectacular twists and stunning surprises.”
—Margaret Truman
* * *
“Our greatest detective tackles our greatest unsolved crime—the JFK assassination. A DAZZLING THRILLER YOU WON’T PUT DOWN.”
—Jack Anderson, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist
* * *
“William Harrington’s first Columbo novel combines the pleasures of the TV series with a serious historical theme—the murder of the President. This is A SMART, FAST AND COMPLETELY CAPTIVATING NOVEL FOR EVERY TASTE.”
—Mystery Scene
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
COLUMBO: THE HELTER SKELTER MURDERS
Copyright © 1994 by MCA Publishing Rights, a Division of MCA, - Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Cover art by Dan Gonzalez
A Forge Book: Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10010
* * *
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. ISBN: 0-812-53026-8
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-7148
First edition: August 1994: First mass market edition: July 1995
Printed in the United States of America
Prologue
Saturday, August 9, 1969 0914 hours.
“Code 2, possible homicide, 10050 Cielo Drive.”
“Unit 8L5, roger, responding 10050 Cielo Drive.”
“Unit 8L62, will respond 10050 Cielo Drive."
“Columbo, homicide. I’ll check out 10050 Cielo Drive.”
* * *
0937 hours.
He was not the first homicide detective on the scene. Two other detective lieutenants had also responded to the call and, being closer, had arrived before Columbo did. Four black-and-whites were also there, red and blue lights flashing atop them. As Columbo got out of his car and walked toward an open gate and a driveway, a uniformed officer leveled a sawed-off shotgun at him.
“Take it easy,” said Columbo. “I’m on The Job. Lieutenant Columbo. Homicide.”
The officer was skeptical. Probably in his judgment this man with the gnawed cigar, uncombed hair, and short raincoat flapping around him could not be an LAPD homicide detective. But he was. He showed the shield.
“What’s the story?” Columbo asked.
“It’s a goddamned slaughterhouse, Lieutenant,” the officer said. “I don’t know how many bodies are in there. One in that car over there, too.” He nodded in the direction of a white Rambler.
Columbo walked to the car. Inside was the body of a sandy-haired young man. His clothes—a plaid shirt and blue jeans—and the seat of the car were soaked with his blood.
Columbo walked across the parking area, past the garage, and toward the entry to the house.
The house was handsome, not a grand mansion but a comfortable-looking home set in the middle of a clipped lawn. The premises were landscaped with flowers and trees, and a swimming pool was visible beyond one comer of the house.
Not far from the front door stood another uniformed officer, this one cradling a rifle. A second body lay at his feet.
This victim had been savagely beaten and mutilated, his body stabbed repeatedly.
Twenty feet or so beyond this corpse lay another on the lawn; a woman with long, dark hair, wearing a nightgown so bloody it was impossible to tell what color it had been.
Blood spattered the grass and shrubbery. Columbo stepped up on the long, low porch and walked toward the front door. The letters P-I-G were printed in blood on the lower half of the door.
He walked into the living room. A detective he recognized sat on the piano bench but he could not remember his name. The man was in shock. He looked up, stared dumbly at Columbo, and nodded toward the couch in front of the fireplace.
Knowing an experienced homicide detective was not shocked by anything less than horrible, Columbo moved hesitantly toward the couch. He looked over the couch and quickly covered his eyes with his hands.
Lying on the floor was another mutilated corpse, this one of a beautiful young blond woman. She was dressed in a pair of flower-pattern bikini panties and a matching bra, and her blood covered so much of her body it must have been smeared over her. A rope was looped around her throat. The rope hung from a beam in the ceiling, suggesting she had been hanged and stabbed. What was worse, she was hugely pregnant.
A few feet from her lay another blood-drenched body, that of a short man. His head was wrapped in a bloody towel.
One by one, the bodies found at 10050 Cielo Drive were identified.
—The body in the white Rambler was that of Steven Earl Parent, eighteen. He had come to the house the night before to visit a friend who worked there as a caretaker and lived in the guest house beyond the swimming pool. He had come to sell the young caretaker a clock radio. The killers had not intended to murder Steve Parent. He simply had been at the wrong place at the wrong time and had been shot.
—The body near the front door was that of Voytek Frykowski, thirty-two. He had been shot twice, bludgeoned thirteen times, and stabbed fifty- one times. He was in the house because he was the lover of Abigail Folger, the coffee heiress.
—The body on the lawn was that of Abigail Folger, twenty-five. She had died of multiple knife wounds. She and Frykowski had occupied the house for a few months but were now in the process of moving out. The house had been rented by the film director Roman Polanski.
—The body in front of the fireplace was that of the actress Sharon Tate, twenty-six, the wife of Roman Polanski. She was best known for her role in Valley of the Dolls. She had been hanged by the neck before she was stabbed to death. She was eight months pregnant.
—The body lying near that of Sharon Tate was that of Jay Sebring, thirty-five, an internationally known men’s hair stylist. He and Sharon Tate had once been lovers but were not anymore, and he was in the house just as a guest.
* * *
Sunday, August 10, 1969
Sunday morning two more bodies were found in a home at 3301 Waverly Drive. These two people had been savagely butchered also, in much the same way as the people at 10050 Cielo Drive. They were Leno LaBianca, forty-four, the owner of a string of food stores, and his wife
Rosemary LaBianca, thirty-eight.
Printed in the victims’ blood on the walls of the LaBianca home were the words DEATH TO PIGS RISE and HEALTER SKELTER.
* * *
Monday, January 25, 1971 1127 hours.
Judge Charles H. Older addressed the court. “All jurors and alternates are present. All counsel but Mr. Hughes are present. The defendants are present. Mr. Tubick, has the jury reached a verdict?”
Herman Tubick, foreman of the jury answered, “Yes, Your Honor, we have.”
“Please hand the verdict forms to the bailiff.”
Columbo watched from the back of the courtroom. He had devoted many hours to solving the mystery of the Tate-LaBianca murders and had become personally acquainted with each of the four defendants.
As he had done several times before, Charles Manson had changed his appearance. He appeared in court today neatly dressed in a white shirt with a blue scarf and with a neatly trimmed goatee. The three young women known as the Manson girls had come to court in their gray jail uniforms. They giggled and whispered. They winked at Manson, and he winked back.
The bailiff handed the verdict forms to the judge, who scanned them and handed them to the clerk. “The clerk will read the verdicts.”
Gene Darrow, the clerk, cleared his throat quietly before speaking. “In the Superior Court of the State of California, in and for the County of Los Angeles, the People of the State of California versus Charles Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Leslie Van Houten, Case Number A-253,156.
“We the jury in the above-entitled action, find the defendant, Charles Manson, guilty of the crime of murder of Abigail Folger in violation of Section 187, Penal Code of California, a felony as charged in Count I of the Indictment, and we further find it to be murder of the first degree.”
The clerk continued to read through the twenty- seven separate verdicts.
—Charles Milles Manson, thirty-six, a.k.a. Jesus Christ, a.k.a. God: guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and seven counts of murder in the first degree.
—Susan Denise Atkins, twenty-one, a.k.a. Sadie Mae Glutz: guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and seven counts of murder in the first degree.
—Leslie Van Houten, twenty, a.k.a. LuLu: guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of murder in the first degree.
—Patricia Krenwinkel, twenty-one, a.k.a. Katie: guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and seven counts of murder in the first degree.
Manson’s hands shook as he heard the verdicts. The girls smiled as though the verdicts had nothing to do with them. When the clerk finished, Patricia Krenwinkel stopped smiling.
“You have just judged yourselves!” she yelled at the jury.
Solving the mystery of the Tate-LaBianca murders, as the case came to be called, had occupied thousands of hours for scores of detectives. One of those was Columbo, who was engaged week after week in the autumn of 1969, checking out leads.
Her autopsy had proved that Sharon Tate had not been sexually molested before she was killed, but the scantiness of the clothing in which she was found caused some to wonder if she had not at least been stripped. Questioning the housemaid, the caretaker, and Roman Polanski, Columbo learned that matching flowered bras and bikini panties were Ms. Tate’s favorite apparel on hot days.
Columbo checked out the suggestion that Leno LaBianca might have been Mafia connected and that his murder was mob related. He learned that LaBianca was known in the Italian community for having no mob connections.
When it began to appear that a ragged collection of assorted misfits that had gathered around a shabby guru named Charlie Manson might have had something to do with the murders, Columbo collared six members of the gang, released four after questioning them, and filed auto-theft charges against two. This brought him into personal contact with Manson, who had been arrested by other officers and was being held. He was present during part of Manson’s interrogation, asked him questions himself, and became acquainted with him.
Manson liked to give people nicknames, and he gave one to Columbo: Crisco, meaning Christopher) Columbo.
Columbo interviewed the Manson girls. It was a frustrating experience. They had been totally programmed by Manson and, like automata, said only what they thought Manson would want them to say.
Except Susan Atkins, who said many things Manson certainly did not want her to say.
Columbo testified at the Manson trial. His testimony established minor but essential points.
Manson and the three Manson girls were sentenced to death, the prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, having remarked that if this case did not deserve the death penalty, what case ever could? On February 18, 1972, however, the Supreme Court of the State of California abolished the death penalty in that state. With their sentences reduced to life imprisonment, the four became eligible for parole in 1978. Twenty-five years after the Tate-LaBianca murders, all four remained in prison.
Why? Why did Charles Manson send these people to commit such horrible murders?
The most common theory was that he meant to “bring down Helter Skelter,” believing that the white community would be terrified by these ritual murders, would turn violently against the blacks, and generate a race war in the United States. From the chaos of Helter Skelter, Charles Manson and his followers would emerge as the new leaders and rulers of the country.
Most of the members of the one-time Manson Family are in prison. But not all—
Part One
Say, this is some place, isn’t it? Khoury…
Yeah, sure. Khoury, the guy with the great store.
No wonder the place looks so beautiful.
It comes from Khoury’s, it costs money!
One
Khoury’s
August 9, 1994
The name was on his store on Rodeo Drive, in gleaming stainless-steel block letters—
It was on his license plate—khoury. It was on labels securely affixed to ten thousand items of merchandise—imported by khoury. It was the center of the oval logo fired on the bottom of every plate, saucer, and cup of his line of chinaware— khoury & co. It was engraved on the bottoms of gold and silver cigarette lighters, compacts, pocket flasks, and so on, and on the backs of watches—a khoury design. It was on the labels sewn into his line of lingerie—the khoury collection. His motion-picture production company was Khoury & Associates.
Discriminating taste was his life: his life’s work, his passion, his chief source of satisfaction. His very name was a synonym for chic. No, for more than that, for elegance.
The name inspired confidence in the people who bought at Khoury’s. Since 1946, when his father established the store, the name had connoted urbane and pricey. As they said around town, you couldn’t buy tchotchkes at Khoury’s. Yussef père and now Yussef fils, father and son, traveled the world to find merchandise that would honor the name and appeal to their clientele. They had intuitive eyes for quality. Anything bought at Khoury’s was something exquisite, superior for its kind, whatever it was: something simple or something elaborate. A gift might not be what the recipient wanted or had any use for, but the name Khoury’s on the box usually made up the deficiency.
The hour was six-thirty, and on an August evening the sun was still high and brilliant. Yussef Khoury could have driven into the store parking lot from the street behind, but he enjoyed driving past, looking at the palm-shaded building and at the stream of customers going in and coming out. His father had had the brick building painted white. The son had had the facade lightly sandblasted, knocking off about half the paint and leaving a dulled white and red surface that was a Beverly Hills landmark. No colored lights shone on the stainless-steel letters that spelled his name. No floodlights shone on the front of the store in the evening. People knew where Khoury’s was. They would find it.
His car was a 1954 gull-wing silver Mercedes sports sedan, a classic automobile now worth many times what it had sold for when it was new. Its most distinguishing feature was the doors. Hinged at the
center of the roof, they swung up. He drove around the comer and into the parking lot. A uniformed guard and a plainclothesman were always on duty in the lot, and both of them saluted as Khoury drove in. He put the car in the space with his name on it.
“Good evening, Mr. Khoury,” said the plainclothesman, as Khoury popped the gull-wing open. “Did you have a good workout?”
“Good evening, Mike. I sure did. With a swim. Best exercise in the world, a swim. Good for the body, good for the mind.”
Fifty-four years old, Yussef Khoury was a compact, muscular man of less than average height, with an olive complexion and small dark eyes. He was bald. In past years he had sometimes worn a toupee but hadn’t done that for several years. He was dressed as was appropriate for Yussef Khoury —that is, to perfection, in a dark-blue suit tailored to fit him exactly, a monogrammed white shirt, a necktie in the regimental stripe of the Third Royal Welch Fusiliers, and black Gucci loafers. He wore a handsome star sapphire ring and a Khoury wrist- watch.
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